The sun shone strong in a cloudless sky, and since we were headed somewhat inland where there wasn’t even a sea breeze for relief, I had worn shorts, a loose-flowing tank top, and a pair of Wellington boots I’d bought online. They were dark pink and cute as hell.
I’d pulled my hair up high in a ponytail to keep it off my neck, and I could feel the sun burning hot on my nape as I waited.
Through the brown filter of my sunglasses, I noticed movement across the street and started when I saw Lucas Elliot walking toward The Alnster Inn from the direction of the harbor.
“Hey, Lucas!” I called out before I could stop myself. Shifting my sunglasses into my hair, I skipped across the cobbled road as he stopped midstride. His brow puckered with obvious confusion at my approach. “How are you?”
Lucas crossed his arms over his chest and narrowed his eyes. “I’m all right. What can I do for you?”
Honestly, I’d approached him without really thinking about what I was doing, but the words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. “Viola heard about the altercation at the inn. She was grateful you stuck up for her.” She hadn’t said as much, but I knew her well enough to know that she was.
Hopefully.
Lucas scowled. “Who told her? She doesn’t need to know people say stupid shit like that.”
Oh, he so liked her.
It was a struggle to keep a straight face. “Small town.” I shrugged. There was no way I was telling him it was my fault.
“Why do you think I care what Viola thinks of me?” His gaze was far too searching, far too perceptive. “Why do you care?”
“I care because I care about Viola. And I’d like to think that you’re a good guy underneath all your bluster. She doesn’t deserve shit from anyone.”
“Right, well, you don’t know us. You’ve been here all of a few months; that doesn’t make you an expert on this village. Stay out of things between Viola and me,” he warned. “She’s a big girl and she can handle it.”
“Can she?”
Lucas’s head snapped back like I’d slapped him.
I smirked. “Ah, see, you think you’re so smart, that you know everything. Well, I do know Viola. And I know women. As a tough-talking variety of the species myself, I can say with some authority that sometimes we women bust a guy’s balls so he won’t see just how much his words hurt us.”
He shook his head, green eyes flashing with disbelief. “Why would anything I have to say matter enough to hurt Viola?”
“Yeah, Lucas.” I made a “duh” face. “Why would your words matter enough to hurt her?”
It took a second but slowly that disbelief and confusion softened to understanding. And then shock. Before veering between disbelief again and something I couldn’t quite work out.
He opened his mouth to respond, when a beep of a horn stopped him.
Glancing over my shoulder, I saw the Land Rover. Roane gestured from the driver’s seat. Shadow’s head was hanging out the window, his tongue lolling from his mouth.
I gave them a quick wave and turned back to Lucas, who was scowling at his feet in thought. “Well, see you around.”
He glanced up at me warily. “What are you playing at here?”
This guy was so suspicious. For someone this sharp, he really was blindly clueless about Viola. “I’m just looking out for Viola, that’s all.”
Lucas curled his upper lip. “Aye, well, I doubt very much Viola would want you telling her enemy that he has the ability to hurt her feelings.”
“Her enemy?” I scoffed. “Why on earth would a smart guy like you go out of his way to make an enemy of Viola Tait?” I shook my head at him as if he were a moron. “I’ve lived in one of the biggest cities in the US, kid. I’ve met a lot of people in my thirty-odd years on the planet. And she’s a singular kind of woman. Intelligent, confident, kind, loyal, fierce, protective, witty as hell, funny, drop-dead gorgeous and no ego to go with it. Whatever guy ends up with Viola will be the luckiest guy in the world.”
He smirked. “What are you? Her publicist?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Why did you stick up for her with that old guy if you’re so indifferent to her?”
“Again, why do you care?”
“Answer my question first.”
With a heavy sigh, he crossed his arms over his chest. “I already told you why. I would stick up for anyone who was the target of that kind of bigotry.”
Remembering how he shook with fury over what that old villager had said, I mirrored Lucas’s sigh. “You’re young and cocky and right now you think you’ve got years to make mistakes and fix them. But you don’t, Lucas. That’s why I’m here. Because I graduated from college and the next eleven years of my life passed by in the blink of an eye and I found myself with nothing but regrets over the choices that I’d made. I don’t want you, or anyone, to wake up in ten, twenty years’ time, and wonder what could have been. Such benign little words—‘what if.’ But at some point in life, those two words become the scariest two words in the English language.”
I half expected another sarcastic response. Something immature and lacking in foresight. Yet, to my surprise, Lucas just looked at The Alnster Inn and then back to me, his expression solemn.
“You think I don’t already know that, growing up with my dad, then you really don’t know anything about this place. Now”—his gaze flickered over my shoulder to Roane before returning to mine—“take this as a gentle warning and not a threat, because I don’t want your boyfriend kicking my arse, but putting your nose into people’s business round here tends to get the thing lopped off.”
I could tell by his expression and tone that it wasn’t a threat. That he actually meant well by the warning. So I heeded it, wondering if perhaps I really had crossed a line. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just . . . trying to be helpful.”
“Aye, well, I’m not in need of your matchmaking services, Ms. Starling.” With a wry grin and a tip of his invisible hat, he strode past me toward the inn.
I shook my head in disbelief. No wonder young Viola was intrigued by this guy. He was too smart for his own freaking good, and talking to him wasn’t like talking to any twenty-year-old guy I’d met before. There was an attractive authority and maturity about Lucas Elliot that made him dangerous to young women everywhere. And he totally had me figured out.
Dammit.
“You getting in anytime soon?” Roane called from his SUV.
With a grin of apology, I hurried over and climbed in. “Sorry.”
“What was that about?” He jerked his chin in the direction of The Alnster Inn.
Did I really want to tell Roane about my failed matchmaking attempts?
“Evie?”
Finding myself unable to invent a lie or bad excuse, I told him everything. What I’d witnessed between Lucas and Viola on Market Day, Viola’s expression when she saw Lucas with that unknown girl, and then Lucas’s reaction to the old racist villager.
“I think they like each other underneath all that animosity.”
Roane shot me an amused look as he drove us out of Alnster. “Evie, anyone with eyes can see Lucas Elliot wants Viola Tait.”
I gaped. “You know?”
“Oh, aye.” He turned left onto the main road, heading south from Alnster. “A few years ago—it must have been early summer, just before the two of them were heading to Newcastle Uni—Viola was in a car accident and ended up in hospital with a broken collarbone and cracked ribs. Word spread round the village fast, but all anyone knew was that Vi was in hospital, that the car she was in was totaled and it was bad. Her friend, the driver, escaped miraculously with very few injuries, but Viola was unconscious when she was pulled from the car by paramedics.”
“Jesus,” I whispered, thinking of Milly and Dex and how worried they must have been.
“Aye. Well, I was at
the hospital to support Milly and Dex. I didn’t want to leave them until I was sure Viola was going to be all right. When I came out of her room, I found Lucas skulking around, pale faced—a jittery bloody mess.” Roane shook his head, smirking. “When I approached him, he practically jumped me for information about Viola, and I knew then my suspicions were correct. Lucas doesn’t just fancy Viola, Evie, he cares about her. He might even love her.”
My chest ached at the thought. “But—”
“He knew I knew then, and he made me promise I wouldn’t tell anyone he’d been there to see how she was. And I haven’t told anyone until now.”
“Why?”
“Because his name is Lucas Elliot. Do you think West, or even Kathy, would ever speak to that boy again if he told them he was getting together with Viola Tait?”
I threw my hands up in despair. “This is ridiculous, Roane! Why should two young people who obviously care about each other have to be at each other’s throats to keep the other at bay, because some dude can’t get over a lost love?”
My friend was quiet for a moment. And then, voice gentle, he asked, “Have you ever been in love, Evie?”
Surprised by the turn of conversation, I blinked a few times before admitting, “No.”
“Then how can you say West Elliot should just get over it? I’m not saying I agree with the shit he’s pulled, or that he shouldn’t have tried to move on . . . I absolutely don’t. I’m just saying that West must have loved Milly with everything he had for it to have twisted him up inside so badly. And that’s sad, Evie. That’s fucking tragic.”
It was. Terribly so. But . . . “Any good father wouldn’t wish the same on his son.”
“I know you mean well.” He gave me a gentle smile to soften the blow of what he said next. “But you need to stop playing matchmaker with those two.”
Feeling somewhat foolish and admonished, I turned away, watching the countryside pass us by. “I just . . . I don’t want them to end up like me. In their thirties and desperately searching their memory for where it was they took the wrong goddamn turn. It would be worse for them, knowing what was possible between them and they never took the chance on each other.”
“Who’s to say it would work out with them anyway?”
True.
I nodded, melancholy.
“Hey.” I felt a strong sensation squeeze my knee, and I looked down to see Roane’s big hand on me. There was a scar across his middle knuckle, and his fingernails were short and blunt. The skin of his hands and arms was just a shade darker than my tan legs. His palm was rough, leathery. A working hand. Masculine against my feminine, slender, soft-skinned knee. There was something visceral about the sight.
I shivered.
“They’ll be all right.” At his words I wrenched my eyes up. He shot me a quick, meaningful look before he said, “You’ll be all right too, angel.”
Something sweet and heady moved through me at the term of endearment. “Angel.” I liked that. I covered his hand with mine and gave him a grateful smile.
As we drove, I was aware of everything. That he hadn’t removed his hand, and every now and then he would flex it on my leg, his thumb brushing the bend in my knee. Between the heat and his touch, sweat gathered behind my knees. The only sound between us was the roll of the road beneath us and Shadow’s panting from the back seat.
A few minutes later, Roane lifted his hand off my knee as he hit the right turn signal, and we turned off the main road, crossing opposing traffic as soon as there was a break in it to venture down a dirt road that cut through open fields on either side. There were a lot of sheep in the field to my left.
“Is this your farm?” I asked.
“This is some of my farm. The sheep farm.”
I remembered Roane telling me he had land to the east for arable farming, and nodded. “About time,” I joked. “You kept avoiding taking me out here so much, I was starting to believe it wasn’t real.”
“It’s real. There’s just nothing much of excitement to see.”
As it turned out, he wasn’t wrong, but what I didn’t tell him was that just being with him made even the most mundane experiences exciting. Not that the farm was mundane. It was just . . . well, a farm. But it was Roane’s farm, and therein lay the difference.
The dirt road led to a small farmhouse with agriculture buildings situated on three sides of it.
“We’re surrounded by over a hundred acres of land here for nearly three hundred sheep,” Roane said as he jumped out and let Shadow out the back of the vehicle.
I hopped out and rounded the SUV, my eyes on the stone farmhouse. The sound of bleating sheep hit my ears, and although there was a faint hint of sea salt in the air, I mostly smelled grass, hay, and the slight sting of fertilizer. The odors weren’t strong, but I imagined on a windy day that breeze swept them from the fields to the farmhouse. “Three hundred sheep? That’s a lot, right?”
“Aye, more than some, less than others.” He took hold of my hand and led me toward the huge modern barn that sat adjacent to the farmhouse. Shadow trotted at our backs as we walked across a hard dirt road. “We rebuilt the barn five years ago.” We stopped at one of three green wooden barn doors that slid open on a wrought-iron rail. I peeked inside, the smell of hay, soil, musk, and something faintly chemical catching my nose. “We use this for lambing season, which you’ve thankfully missed.”
“Thankfully?” I pulled my head out of the large space. “Lambs are adorable.”
“This place”—he indicated the barn—“isn’t adorable during lambing season. Trust me.” With that, he led me around the back of the farmhouse, where an older but pretty substantial rectangular shed stood vertical to the house. There was a pen around the large shed, and the chickens walking around outside gave away its use. “Chicken shed,” Roane said anyway as we rounded the house to the other side.
The two largest buildings on this part of the land loomed over us, and I saw Bobby moving around inside one of them among a lot of sheep. Hence the bleating I’d heard as soon as we approached. The two buildings had no doors, just steel pens, and the corrugated iron walls curved up and over in a semicircle. The first building was messy with hay, and Bobby appeared to be mucking it out through a small door at the back. The second building, although filled with hay, was empty of sheep.
“They’re called hoop houses,” Roane explained. “We bring the sheep here during very hot weather, keep them from being out in the sun too long. They were built when we had less sheep, and they just fit, but we’ll need to build another to give them more room.”
The thought of those poor animals suffering in this heat made me frown. “What about the barn? Can’t they go in there?”
He shook his head. “We need that kind of climate for lambing, but we try to keep them out of enclosed spaces. It can cause respiratory problems.”
“Evie, Roane.” Bobby made his way through the sheep, pitchfork in hand. His T-shirt was soaked with sweat, and he wiped a hand across his forehead. “This weather is grand, eh.”
His tone was bland, but since he was sweating by the buckets and was red in the face, I decided that had been sarcasm.
“How are they?” Roane nodded to the flock in the hoop house.
“Aye, they’re fine.” Bobby grinned at me. “Enjoying the tour?”
“It’s interesting.”
“This is the end of it.” Roane’s lips twitched with amusement. “Nothing else to see, angel, but fields upon fields.”
“What about the arable farm?”
He flicked a look at Bobby before glancing over his shoulder to check on Shadow. “It’s all just the same except no animals. The hoop houses over there are for keeping hay and the barns for holding grain and barley.”
Shadow stood in the shelter of the farmhouse door. “Come.” Roane gestured to the house. “I’ll show you inside. My great-gr
andfather built this place.”
With a wave to Bobby, I followed Roane to the house. The farmhouse was rectangular with the door jutting out, built into a porch that looked like a mini house with its sharp triangular roof. There were two windows downstairs to either side of the door, and upstairs there were four windows. The windows were made of white wooden frames with six small glass panels in each.
As soon as Roane let us into the porch, I smiled. The porch had two windows on either side, allowing light into the small space. There was a bench under each window, covered in tartan blankets and cushions. An old-fashioned coat and umbrella stand stood in the corner beside a row of men’s shoes. It was fairly cool in the porch, a nice reprieve from the heat outside, and Shadow seemed to agree, sprawling across the cool slate tile floor.
Roane sat down on one of the benches and began to remove his Wellingtons. I followed suit, ridiculously relieved to get out of the hot boots. I pulled my sunglasses off my head, useless as they were up there, and set them beside me.
Our eyes met as we sat across the bench from each other, and something in Roane’s expression made my breath catch. “What?” I whispered.
He shook his head with a mysterious smile and stood up to hold out his hand. “Want to see the rest?”
Of course I did. I took his hand and let him lead me through the inner porch door and into the farmhouse. A wall of heat hit me, and not for the first time since summer came to Northumberland, I cursed the British and their lack of air-conditioning.
As if he’d read my thoughts, Roane chuckled. “Old houses weren’t built with insulation like nowadays where it keeps the house warm during the winter and cool during the summer.”
“How do you cope?” I murmured, flapping a hand at my face as I took in the dark space. A spindled staircase sat in the center of the hallway, while there were doors to either side of us. The dark wood of the staircase and sideboard didn’t help this windowless room from looking cheerless, and the floral wallpaper was extremely dated.
Much Ado About You Page 19
